"There are plenty of single women—they're all over the place. But ones with only a single child are very rare. The population around here has been in massive flux, so I don't know the exact details of every spot. I can only tell you what things were like a few days ago, or even a month or two back," Langxiong said.
"Why are there so few with only one child?"
Langxiong explained, "Too many battles have been fought this past year, conscripting nearly every able-bodied male Shaman with any strength. In the past six months alone, eleven thousand male Shamans and three thousand female Shamans were conscripted from our region. Basically, more than half of those in their prime were drafted. But I heard that we actually lost the great war against the human race, and lost horribly. Most of those conscripted will never return.
"This year the conscription was just exceptionally severe, but there have been drafts in previous years too. For some reason, there's been nonstop fighting over the past four or five years. As you've seen, many houses in town have no Shamans living in them now.
"That is why, three years ago, following the revelations of the ancestors, I reopened the Feast of Offering to the Gods, held once every six months."
Wei Yuan asked, "What is the Feast of Offering to the Gods?"
Langxiong said, "You are an honorable Shaman Scholar, lord, so you wouldn't know the customs of us common folk. Whenever the common population drops too low, the Feast of Offering to the Gods is held. During the feast, every female Shaman in the villages who is still fertile but lacks the protection of a male Shaman must participate.
"On the night of the offering, they drink a secret decoction of herbs, and after offering sacrifices to the gods, they mate with the males of the entire village. After the feast ends, they can usually begin conceiving new life. The children born this way are raised by the village, and if a village truly cannot support them, the town provides some grain as well."
Wei Yuan thought he understood the Shamans fairly well, but he had never imagined such a custom existed. Many common Shaman races reproduced in large litters and matured rapidly, reaching adulthood in just five or six years. No wonder Shamans seemed endless no matter how many were killed in battle, unbothered even by the loss of tens of myriad casualties.
"Which single female Shamans do you think are noteworthy, and where do they usually live?" Wei Yuan pressed.
Langxiong said, "Come to my home. The only map in town is there."
Langxiong's home was situated upriver along a small stream, built as a domed house in the Shaman style. Water from the stream was diverted into the courtyard, making it half water and half land. In the water within the courtyard, many fat fish crawled about.
When Wei Yuan and Langxiong flew overhead, they happened to see several female bears with lighter fur relieving themselves by the riverbank. Large, unspeakable mounds dropped into the river, washed downstream by the flowing water.
In the river swam many strange and bizarre fish. Before those unspeakable things could drift very far, the fish tore into them and devoured them completely. Further downstream, many Shamans speared fish from the river and ate them raw on the spot.
At first glance, aside from being sparsely populated, the town did not seem particularly filthy. Most of the strange odors lingering in the air were toxic miasmas unique to the Wu domain—harmful to humans, but beneficial to Shamans.
The river was remarkably clear, with hardly any debris visible on its surface. It would have seemed like a clean, picturesque scene of green hills and clear waters, but only now did Wei Yuan realize the reality lurking behind that clean facade was utterly nauseating.
Entering Langxiong's home, Wei Yuan saw one of the female bears who had just relieved herself walk in, carrying a large fish. Wei Yuan harbored deep doubts as to whether she had washed her paws. Keeping his expression neutral, he swept the area with his divine sense and discovered that not a single Shaman in the entire town was washing their paws.
Wei Yuan suddenly felt profoundly grateful that he had only had a few cups of wine at the inn—and the moment he had tasted it, he had known it was wine he had sold to the Shamans himself.
Langxiong warmly urged him to eat, but Wei Yuan adamantly refused.
Thinking Wei Yuan was displeased, Langxiong scratched his ears and cheeks in anxious desperation, hurriedly summoning several young, beautiful female bears with thick legs and dense fur to serve the esteemed Spirit Shaman.
Langxiong only cursed how small and remote this place was. All they had were four-legged commoners of mediocre flesh; he couldn't even find a lovely Shaman with five legs, let alone an incomparable six-legged beauty.
Wei Yuan sternly refused!
In the end, Langxiong had no choice but to take out the map and point out several villages where Shamans still congregated. The next instant, Wei Yuan snatched the map and vanished.
This display shocked Langxiong so much that he flopped straight onto the ground. All along, he had assumed his strength wasn't that far off from this Spirit Shaman's.
The two female bears showed expressions of relief, remarking how fortunate it was that he hadn't taken a fancy to them. Otherwise, having to accompany such an ugly Shaman would give them nightmares.
Hearing this, Langxiong suddenly swung his bear paw in wide arcs and slapped them viciously across the face, cursing, "Ignorant bumpkins! Lord Peacock stated several times that he is a Spirit Shaman! Do you idiots have any idea what that means?"
Only then were the two female bears shocked. "A Spirit Shaman? Isn't that an esteemed lord on equal footing with a Nether Shaman?"
The other female bear said, "What 'equal footing'? They're obviously far stronger than Nether Shamans! I heard that in this recent fight against the Spirit Shamans, several of our Nether Shamans were beaten until they pissed their pants and fled. But is he really a Spirit Shaman? He doesn't look like one."
Langxiong was so enraged the fur on his face stood on end. He roared, "Spirit Shamans aren't like us! Among them, those recognized by their elders as having a great chance of becoming a Spirit Shaman are also permitted to call themselves Spirit Shamans! Fellows like that are sometimes even more terrifying than actual Spirit Shamans! This is a truly great figure! I was just about to latch onto his hind leg, but you two idiots ruined it! Couldn't you have read a few more books?"
One of the female bears scoffed. "What's the use of reading books? You didn't take us in for our literacy anyway. Weren't you just lusting after our bodies?"
Langxiong found it impossible to reason with them and could only keep roaring in frustration.
Meanwhile, following the map, Wei Yuan had already arrived at the first village. Restraining his aura and changing into a tattered cloak, he walked into the village.
Wei Yuan now looked like a somewhat down-on-his-luck Strength Shaman who had just advanced to the Dao Foundation stage. It was said that in many Shaman villages, a Shaman at the Dao Foundation realm was sufficient to serve as village chief. Thus, this disguise was just right—not so weak as to be looked down upon, yet not so strong as to draw unwanted shock.
One could not keep too low a profile in the Wu domain; a Body Casting Shaman entering an unfamiliar village alone was basically just walking in as an extra dish for the villagers' dinner.
At the village entrance, several Shaman children were playing. Seeing Wei Yuan enter, they curiously gathered around.
Just as Wei Yuan was pondering what to give them to send them off after gleaning some information, an exclamation suddenly sounded behind him: "This old demon is so formidable!"
Wei Yuan turned around in silence to see a Shaman child with dark red skin, trailing a long tail, and bearing a short arm growing beneath his left armpit, pointing at him and crying out in amazement. He had remarkably large, dark red eyes, each the size of an egg.
In the eyes of humans, this appearance was grotesque and unimaginably hideous, but clearly, this three-armed creature was the best-looking child in this village, and all the other Shaman children looked up to him as their leader.
As the child stared at Wei Yuan, concentric whorls rippled in his pupils, as if trying to suck one's soul right in.
Wei Yuan frowned slightly. Under the child's gaze, he actually felt a faint sense of unease, as if something about him had been seen through.
The Shaman child cried out again, "Run! This is an old demon who has lived for hundreds of years!"
The crowd of Shaman children panicked and scattered in all directions. Wei Yuan frowned inwardly and was just about to catch that Shaman child to question him thoroughly when a stir in his divine sense revealed something unusual about a certain household—it seemed his target was right there.
Inside that courtyard, an ordinary Shaman woman was teaching a Shaman child how to write. The peculiarity was that the child was already fairly grown, yet there was only a single child in the courtyard. Moreover, Wei Yuan detected numerous hidden Shaman experts scattered throughout the village, arranged in a perimeter around this small courtyard to secretly guard it.
Chapter 582